High Street Gambling Reform

Ben Coleman Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for securing this important debate. Gambling is a subject that the Health and Social Care Committee has looked at in some detail, and it is clear from what I have heard from witnesses, from talking to the National Gambling Clinic—it is in my constituency—and from walking round our local high streets talking to people I know, that high streets remain at the heart of the gambling harm being caused in our country and localities, particularly in our most disadvantaged and poorest communities.

As we have heard, when the Gambling Act 2005 abolished the so-called “demand” test, and replaced it with the “aim to permit”, it removed the requirement to prove local need before opening a betting shop, and opened the door to a wild-west clustering of betting shops in poorer areas. That does devastating damage to individuals, families and communities, because residents in streets where every third or fourth shop can be a gambling den with cups of tea, face constant exposure to gambling during routine activities. They could be shopping for groceries, taking kids to school or commuting for work, and there is a gambling premises. Gambling becomes normalised. It is like a regular part of daily life, rather than activity that, as we know, requires caution. For those vulnerable to addiction, it makes avoidance nearly impossible and relapse inevitable, and the financial consequences can be catastrophic.

Lower-income families, and people who earn far less or live on benefits, have no buffers to absorb that sort of loss. What might be manageable for someone with savings becomes ruinous for someone living from pay cheque to pay cheque. We are talking about people who cannot pay their rent, or whose bills are going unpaid and whose children are going without. The toll on mental health is huge. Indeed, it is immense: depression, anxiety, shame, and isolation. As we have heard, we cannot necessarily see a problem gambler. We may be able to see a problem drunk, but a problem gambler hides their addiction from loved ones—that was one of the points made strongly to me when I visited the National Gambling Clinic in Earl’s Court. The stress that someone is already under is compounded by the gambling, and those mental health stresses may already be more prevalent in depressed or deprived areas, where housing is less adequate and people face other stresses and challenges on a daily basis.

We have heard about the redoubtable charity Gambling with Lives, to which I pay tribute. There is no doubt in my mind that the gambling industry and its lobbyists are often, in their behaviour, simply thugs. People such as the wonderful Ritchies—who set up Gambling with Lives after losing their son, and who brought a constituent to see me who talked about his own son losing his life to gambling—are still ploughing away and fighting their fight, and they have been inspirational for all Members of the House who have met them. They made me and the Health and Social Care Committee aware that there are between 117 and 496 gambling-related suicides every year. Having taken evidence, we thought that, although wide, that data was strong enough to place in our report so that it is on the public record. Gambling does not just tear families apart, it also takes lives away, and we must remember that.

We must also look at the community impact of allowing the clustering of betting shops since the law changed in 2005. That clustering drives out family businesses and community services, and it feeds neighbourhood decline. Hammersmith and Fulham council tried to do something about it. We have a high concentration of betting shops, especially in deprived neighbourhoods. North End Road in Fulham has been identified as a gambling vulnerability zone, and there are two council estates nearby, which are in the bottom decile for deprivation, employment and income.

That is not a coincidence, because higher levels of deprivation and the clustering of gambling premises go together. North End Road in the heart of Fulham is one of three hotspots in the borough. The council is doing its best to act responsibility within the national framework, and it is consulting on a local plan. Residents are keen for it to do that, and in the most vulnerable areas there will be a presumption to refuse, but in the end it cannot refuse premises because the law still constrains it, in a way that is out of kilter with alcohol and other licensing.

The Health and Social Care Committee welcome the fact that the Government have reframed this issue as a public health crisis. We have called for local authorities to have a key role in gambling licensing and for directors of public health to be made a responsible authority when it comes to gambling planning and licensing applications. We need reform of the legislation governing high street gambling, and we need it now.

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[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important debate, and to the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for bringing it forward. Before I turn to some of the specifics of the case she made, I remind the House that the vast majority of people who gamble do so responsibly, safely and without risk of harm. Indeed, some of our annual events in this country are associated with gambling and form part of our national identity. I am thinking in particular of the grand national. Indeed, the first time I ever placed a bet was on a horse called Party Politics. It probably led to an interest in something different from gambling, but that is another matter.

The Government’s own figures show that problem gambling affects around 0.4% of adults. That figure has remained broadly stable for many years. Meanwhile, 22 million people gamble every month without harm. Gambling harms exist, of course, and I sat through oral evidence on that issue in the Health and Social Care Committee in April last year. We have heard some of the most powerful testimony from the hon. Member about real lives that have been harmed because of gambling. Problem gambling can ruin relationships, destroy mental and physical health and, in the worst cases, end lives. The number of gambling-related deaths is far outnumbered by alcohol-specific deaths or alcohol-related deaths, but any life lost and any life destroyed is a tragedy.

We must do more to support people with gambling addictions and crack down on illegal gambling and lawbreaking. However, policy must be based on evidence. Betting shops are among the most heavily regulated retail premises. They have strict age verification requirements, limits on gaming machines, trained staff and formal self-exclusion schemes. Those protections only apply when people gamble in licensed premises. They do not exist in the same way at home and not at all on the black market. We should not assume that further reducing the number of high street betting shops will reduce problem gambling.

When it comes to high street betting shops, research by ESA Retail found that 89% of betting shop customers combine their visit with trips to other local businesses, thereby supporting the high street. Betting shops support around 46,000 jobs, contributing nearly £1 billion a year in direct tax to the Treasury and a further £60 million in business rates to local councils. We have heard how betting shops have spread uncontrollably in some areas, but nationally betting shops are closing. Since 2019, the number of licensed betting shops has fallen by 30%, from more than 8,000 to fewer than 6,000. Thousands of jobs have already been lost as a result, and many more are now at risk following the tax rises announced in the Budget.

[Ben Coleman]

The hon. Member talks about the amount of money raised in tax from gambling companies. Can he also give us the figures for the amount of money that the NHS has to spend each year on the mental health issues and other problems that arise from gambling addiction?

[Joe Robertson]

I think the hon. Member himself agrees that this is not about stopping people gambling. The point I am making is that high street premises represent some of the safer environments for gambling, and some of the riskier forms of gambling are far less visible than the high street shops we have heard about today. I am certainly not minimising in any way the effects of problem gambling and some of those involved in the industry, particularly on the black market.

While the Budget did not directly target betting shops, many operators run integrated online and retail businesses. With online gambling duty doubling and sports betting duty rising by nearly 70%, the UK will have one of the highest tax rates on gambling in the world.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brent East for talking about local empowerment. I think her key point—the heart of her argument—was about empowering local communities and local councils to be able to exercise greater control over high street premises. I want to raise a specific issue that shows how confused the system has become, and which is related to her argument.

Recently, Chesterfield borough council allowed an adult gaming centre to introduce betting facilities without a formal change of planning use, on the basis that betting was considered ancillary. This shows that the council was effectively able to bypass planning laws, and to create confusion and inconsistency in how planning and gambling laws are applied, which is deeply worrying. Betting shops and adult gaming centres are fundamentally different types of premises; they are regulated differently and treated separately in planning law, for good reason. Allowing betting facilities to be introduced into adult gaming centres without proper scrutiny risks creating a back-door route for betting operations to open without local consent or oversight. We support the sentiment behind the argument made by the hon. Member for Brent East: local communities and local councils should be better empowered to make decisions for their high streets.

I want to finish by asking the Minister four questions. First, will the Government act to close the planning loophole that allows adult gaming centres to introduce betting facilities without a proper change of use? Secondly, what assessment has been made of the impact of recent tax rises on high street betting shops, including closures, job losses and empty units, and will it be published? Thirdly, what concrete action is being taken to tackle illegal gambling, and particularly operators that target people who have self-excluded from licensed betting shops? Finally, the Government wrote to the Health and Social Care Committee on 12 June last year and said that they would look to complement local authorities’ existing powers in relation to the licensing of gambling premises. Does the Minister have an update?